Saturday, January 10, 2009

Gaza, the Horror and The Hope

The following quotes stick out in my mind as exemplifying the salient points in the current situation in Gaza. The first is from an interview with Arnon Soffer, one of the intellectual architects of official Israeli policy with respect to the Palestinians. Whether you agree with him or not (I don't) he gives a clear indication of why the "peace process," whatever that means, is a meaningless fiction. I'm quite sure there are those on the Palestinian side who feel pretty much the same way Soffer does. I believe the term intractable foes applies.

[W]hen 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.

If we don’t kill, we will cease to exist. The only thing that concerns me is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.
~ Arnon Soffer

From my perspective the policy of the United States should be neutrality. We have no moral authority or national interest in supporting one side or the other. Unfortunately, as Glenn Greenwald has pointed out here and here, there is little chance of our current policy is going to change. It is too firmly entrenched in both parties. The hope, such as it is, lies in the fact that the United States simply cannot afford to maintain the current foreign policy. It will change when the reality of our economic system rears its ugly head.

William Grigg, as he usually does, cuts right to the quick in his analysis of the situation.

U.S. withdrawal wouldn’t palliate ancient ethno-religious grievances, or those of a more recent vintage rooted in the dispossession of the Palestinians. But it would force the antagonists to make a more realistic accounting of the actual costs of the conflict, which might prod them to make the kind of grudging, halting, agonizingly reluctant material overtures that eventually lead to peace.

Of course, American withdrawal is going to happen anyway when the destruction of the dollar is consummated, a fact that should not be lost on those interested in Israel's survival. That nation's ability to dominate its rivals militarily is a particularly pernicious variant of an investment bubble, one that has distorted Israel's priorities and discouraged it from creating a security framework on assumptions that don't involve leveraging U.S. power on its behalf.

The bubble of U.S.-Israeli dominance in the Middle East will burst as soon as the fiat dollar's global hegemony ends.
~ William N. Grigg

The sad thing is when that happens it will be to the betterment of Israel and the Palestinians, but it will be a catastrophe for us. They'll be forced to find a solution, we'll be standing in the wreckage of our dreams.

2 comments:

Kent McManigal said...

Mythology makes some people believe that they must "support" Israel no matter what or face utter destruction when SkyDaddy decides to end the experiment.

Joey said...

It's opal_kitten from LJ. :)